System monitors possible outbreaks

Posted: Tuesday, August 25, 2009

David Pittmandavid.pittman@amarillo.com

Sometime during the course of her busy day as a school nurse for Tulia Independent School District, Gwen Shannon usually makes time to enter student absentees in a computer system monitored by state health officials.

The system, SYRIS, an acronym for Syndrome Reporting Information System, is a computer-based, two-way, real-time interface between state public health officials and area physicians, school nurses, veterinarians and others who have a role in the detection and prevention of infectious disease outbreaks.

School nurses enter the number of students absent that day, and health officials combine that information with other data they receive to spot and limit short-term illness outbreaks.

When a dramatic increase in absenteeism is noticed from a communicable disease, state health workers intervene to limit a possible outbreak.

"If necessary, a team is sent out to investigate," Shannon said. "It's a way of tracking communicable diseases."

The system, which is voluntary for health providers to participate in, compiles data sent by schools and doctor's offices and allows state health workers to view information broken down by symptom, such as flulike illness or fever with skin rash.

With public schools in the area having begun a new year Monday, state workers with the regional office in Lubbock will monitor reports from various schools. If they see an absentee rate of more than 10 percent - their threshold for action - they will contact the school.

"If there is a more valid reason to continue contact in the area, we would then call the school district's superintendent and go from there," said Donnie Diaz, epidemiologist with the Department of State Health Services in Lubbock. "There's a certain process without frightening the population we're trying to help."

Because the Lubbock office also receives reports of certain illness from hospitals and labs, state workers are better positioned to spot disease outbreaks than individual schools, Diaz said.

A couple of times a month, workers will contact a school. Diaz referred to a school last year that saw a large spike in the number of flu cases.

"We chose to go ahead and go throughout the region and provide, for a good month, proper hand-washing techniques," he said. The efforts helped curtail the spread of flu, and state workers are planning to do the same this year.

The program works two ways, providing local health officials, including school nurses, with news of local outbreaks.

Donna Mann, school nurse with Perryton Independent School District, pointed to food-borne illness outbreaks at an International House of Pancakes in Amarillo and a Sonic in Hereford she learned about through the system.

"I can see the potential for it to be useful," Mann said.

Al Zelicoff, an Albuquerque, N.M., physician who developed a similar program in 1999, said the program has a licensing fee of about 10 cents for each person in a monitoring region.